Flick image courtesy Stephen Baack
I don't know how I missed this one a few weeks ago, but we have another different sponsor for a game. The (former) Dallas Football Classic will be renamed the TicketCity Bowl. I don't know about you, but I am fucking sick to death of these sponsorship deals, not because they exists in and of themselves, but because they change the name of the bowl game. Why couldn't it be the TicketCity Dallas Football Classic?
At least the big bowls haven't changed, but I don't know how long that will last. Gone are the days of the Hall of Fame, Citrus, and Peach Bowls. Excluding the BCS National Championship game, there are thirty-four bowl games. Of those a full third have only the sponsor name in the title of the bowl game. Before long we can say good-bye to the short lived Military and Armed Forces Bowls. Then it will be the Holiday, Alamo, and Liberty Bowls. The last bowls to change their names will be the Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange Bowls, and in that specific order from least likely to most likely with Sugar and Cotton possibly swapped.
You will notice that I do not mention the Fiesta Bowl as one that will hold out. Partially this is due to the age of the previously mentioned four bowl games, but it is simply not the age as the Liberty Bowl is over fifty years old. It has more to due with the prestige of the games and the history involved. While the Cotton Bowl is the only one not currently in the BCS rotation, I expect that to change with the next BCS/Playoff(???) contract when you factor in the Big 12's power shift further into the state of Texas coupled with Jerry Jones' money and new stadium in Arlington.
The one thing that does give me hope is there is one bowl that saw the error of their ways and fixed the perception that they were a corporate shill. The Sun Bowl, established in 1935, added corporate sponsor John Hancock to their name for the 1986 game and then after three years dropped Sun from their name to simply be the John Hancock Bowl. When John Hancock left as the sponsor for the Sun Bowl before the 1994 game, the bowl reverted to its old Sun Bowl moniker and has kept it since then, no matter which corporation sponsors them.
On to the projections…
